Murugesan marches on

Reigning National hardcourt champion and top seed Ranjeet Virali Murugesan was once again in good touch, racing past Ankit Sachdeva 6-2, 6-1 while the second-seeded Rohan Gujjar hardly broke a sweat in crushing Vikram Reddy 6-1, 6-1.

Vijayant Malik faced some intial resistance from Kaza Vinay Sharma but the fourth seed held his composure in scoring a comfortable 6-4, 6-3 win while Japan’s Niki Tatuko outwitted mercurial Russian Vitali Reshtinkov 6-4, 6-4 on another energy-sapping day.

Sachdeva made a promising start in his match against Murugesan, breaking the title favourite in the third game to take a 2-1 lead. However, it proved to be the lull before the strorm as Murugesan ran away with the next five games and clinched the opening set. Murugesan then kept up the momentum before scripting another facile victory.

Results (Indians unless mentioned otherwise): Men’s singles, quarterfinals: Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Ankit Sachdeva 6-2, 6-1; Vijayant Malik bt Kaza Vinayak Sharma 6-4, 6-3; Rohan Gajjar bt Vikram Reddy 6-1, 6-1;  Niki Tatuko (Jpn) bt Vitali Reshetinkov (Rus) 6-4, 6-4.
Doubles, semifinals: Vijayant Malik/ Vivek Shokeen bt Ankit Sachdeva/ Ronak Manuja 3-6, 6-7 (4-7), 10-5; Rohan Gajjar/ Vitali Reshetnikov (Rus) bt Koki Matsunaga/ Niki Takuto (Jpn) 6-2, 7-5.

Quarterfinals: Rohan Gajjar/ Reshetnikov bt Sagar Manjanna/ Veera Venkatesh 6-1, 6-1; Vijayant Malik/ Vivek Shokeen bt P Vignesh/ Kaza Vinayak Sharma 6-7 (4-7), 7-6 (8-6), 10-7; Koki Matsunaga/ Niki Tatuko bt Tejasvi Rao/ Vikram Reddy 6-2, 6-1; Ronak Manuja/ Ankit sachdeva bt Rajat Maheshwari/ Shantanu Rajput 6-2, 6-3.